Jacques Maritain did NOT do the world a favor by introducing his “Human Integralism” which worked to seek a peaceful compromise between communism and Catholicism. This basic ill-formed philosophy is arguably the underpinning of documents like Gaudium et Spes. Communism knows only one mode: DESTROY. It should have been rebuked at V2
Sadly, contributing greatly to this crisis is the modernist “Church of Accompaniment”. The church cannot “accompany” a world gone mad; a world rebelling against the most fundamental natural law realities like a binary sex complementarity. We need to see the world today as Catholics of yesteryear viewed the Protestant Rebellion, which gave rise to the Counsel of Trent. What I suspect I am saying is that the Church NEEDS to find its enemies again in order to shore up its own identity. Satan has been dismissed, hell is now just a little longer stay perhaps than purgatory, the most sinful and scandalous get “canonized” in the mass when passing from this life; confession lines? Hardly. When was that last time your Priest spoke of Justice? I’ll bet he waxed eloquently about mercy recently didn’t he? The Church needs to make the world an ENEMY again and it desperately needs to BE an enemy of the world again. Bishops can start by EX-COMMUNICATING grotesquely formed “catholics” like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Dick Durbin, John Kerry et alio. Jacques Maritain did NOT do the world a favor by introducing his “Human Integralism” which worked to seek a peaceful compromise between communism and Catholicism. This basic ill-formed philosophy is arguably the underpinning of documents like Gaudium et Spes. Communism knows only one mode: DESTROY. It should have been rebuked at V2 in no uncertain terms. Bar none, what we now see sinking the Barque of Peter is exactly “accommodation” and “compromise” to a communist hydra that seeks nothing other than the destruction of Christ and any residue he might have left in the world, namely, His church. Getting this Steward of the Chair of Peter to waken from his current spiritual malaise will take nothing short of a miracle. Perhaps, the next Pope can actually wear the Tiara again, reclaim Rome again and FIGHT for the Faith, for Christ, for souls and eternal life! Deo Gratius!
Granted, the Thomist Maritain also pushed the margin when looking for a way to be Catholic while still in the world. But he did not introduce “human integralism,” rather instead an “integral humanism,” by which was meant something still “at once human and divine–in which alone lies the possibility of a free and worthy life.” But an ambiguity (not unlike blurring St. John Paul II’s distinct “integral humanism” and “natural ecology” [Centesimus Annus] into Laudato si’s catchy “integral ecology”) , especially when recalling Maritain’s fascination with Saul Alinksy–but which, later as a monastic recluse, he rethinks or clarifies in this way:
“For when foolishness acquires such considerable dimensions among Christians, either it must be resorbed pretty quickly, or it will ultimately detach them from the Church. What foolishness? Kneeling before the world [!],” which he then addresses in the last several pages of Chapter 3 of “The Peasant of the Garonne,” (the chapter dated Feb. 14, 1966).
Maritain identifies the diabolical fallacy of erasing “the other world,” the cross, and sanctity. And, yet, he also correctly holds:
“At this point it is suitable to say with particular insistence: haec oportebat facere, et illa non omittere, ‘These things you ought to have done, and the others not to have omitted [Matt. 23:23].’ It was necessary to struggle against the world as the adversary of the saints, but without neglecting (this is said for the past) to devote oneself to the temporal progress of a world oppressed by injustice and misery. And it is necessary to dedicate ourselves to this temporal progress, but without neglecting (this is said for today) to struggle against the world as the adversary of saints.”
But, back to Bonagura, surely yes, the loss of a plausibility structure for our Catholic presence in the world–this loss is fatal. Guardini foresaw our current situation:
“Loneliness in faith will be terrible. Love will disappear from the face of the public world (Matthew xxiii, 12), but the more precious will that love be which flows from one lonely person to another, involving a courage of the heart born from the immediacy of the love of God as it was made known in Christ” (“The End of the Modern World,” 1956).
Maritain started Thomist and ended modernist. Sadly, it was his modernist thought that forms the philosophic bedrock of Guadium et Spes. In this manner, Pope Paul found it possible to “dialog with the modern world”, including socialists/communists. They say one generation will tolerate what the next generation embraces. I can’t help but think we’re now well on the road to collapse – communists firmly in charge. I also can’t help but wonder whether we’d be this far down the road to destruction had the counsel laid out with firm resolve a decisive condemnation of communism. Deo Gratius!
Not so much a “philosophic bedrock” as part of a cobbled together and unresolved compromise (Gaudium et Spes, meaning both “the joys and the hopes AND the griefs and anxieties”).
As for the counsel (sic council) and “condemnation of communism”, this can be found in Gaudium et Spes, “Systemic Atheism” and “The Church’s Attitude Toward Atheism” (nn. 20-21, three pages).
The criticism is not so much the supposed absence of these sections, but the fact that the Council chose to not call out the Soviet Union by name. The rationale for this approach, not accepted by all, was that it was a concession in order to gain Soviet permission for the enslaved Orthodox Churches to attend the Council as observers, rather than not.
Perhaps a long-term strategy addressing a schism of a thousand years within the perennial Church (while the particular Soviet Union came and went, surprisingly, in less than half a century)?
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